Joseph Conrad and Experiential Narration
Joseph Conrad and Experiential Narration

Summary/Abstract: This article argues that Joseph Conrad routinely employed a narrative of immediacy (one where the narrators chronicled events as if they were unfolding at that very moment), rather than a narrative of retrospect (one where the narrator looks back on prior events, often attempting to clarify or comment on them along the way). Conrad chooses various methods to achieve this effect, especially what Ian Watt once coined “delayed decoding,” where a character experiences phenomena one way, only to revise that perception shortly thereafter. Other techniques Conrad uses include limited angles of view, where a narrator presents only the limited range of a character’s individual view of phenomena, and distinctions between the narrator and the narrator as character, where what is narrated represents not what the narrator knows at the time of narration but what the character did not know at the time of experience.

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